My brother and cycling to York 1966

That's my brother Peter on the right. he was the good looking one of the two of us.The picture above is taken with the Vito B 35mm camera. The ones below are taken with a 'box brownie' on 120 roll film. We had 12 shots per film and a choice of two apertures by sliding a lever. Fixed focus single element lens and fixed shutter speed. I occasionally got double exposures because there was no interlock, you wound the film until a small number appeared in a red window.

Picture of Peter Mellor looking at the view during our bike ride. He was probably 15 at the time. We each had second hand road bikes. Our mother made the panniers out of gabardine material because we couldn't afford shop ones. Our father obtained some strong wire from work to make the frame. Our sleeping bag covers or 'stuff sacks' were also home made.

We couldn't carry our rather heavy tent and so we carried a sheet of Visqueen (polythene sheet) and wild camped in the bracken. It rained a little during the night but we woke up soaking - due to condensation inside the plastic! That is Peter in the plastic camp in the bracken.

 

A disadvantage of wild camping is not knowing whether it will be sheep or cows that you meet in the morning. Sheep keep away, but young heifers are incredibly curious (in an inquisitive way).

Our parents provided a 'back-up' and carried our tent, heavy meths cooking stove and food to a prearranged camp site. We stayed there a few nights and went out on bike rides. On the way down a steep Yorkshire Dales hill Peter's brakes failed and he went flying over a bridge parapet into the stream below landing on his back. Fortunately we weren't far from the camp site and the farmer was very helpful. The forks were straightened enough to be serviceable. We had a new wheel built in the local village onto the original hub, cheaper in those days than buying a new wheel. We were able to leave our camping gear with the farmer as we continued our ride East to meet our parents in York. We somehow got bikes, camping gear and ourselves into the car for the journey back to Poutlon-le-Fylde.